Chapter II: =the Founder of the Cottonian Library.= (4)

By the Statute which established the COTTON Library as a national institution, it was enacted as follows: ‘The Cottonian Library ... shall be kept and preserved, in the name and family of the COTTONS, for public use and advantage. [Sidenote: THE ESTABLISHMENT ACT OF 1700.] And therefore, according to the desire of the said Sir John COTTON, and at his request, the said Mansion House, ... and also all the said Library, ... together with all the Coins, Medals, and other rarities, ... shall be vested in Trustees ... with a perpetual succession.’ The first Trustees were the Lord Chancellor SOMERS, Mr. Speaker HARLEY (afterwards Earl of Oxford), and the Lord Chief Justice, _ex officio_; together with Sir Robert COTTON, of Hatley St. George, Cambridgeshire; Philip COTTON, of Conington; Robert COTTON of Gedding, in Cambridgeshire, and William HANBURY, of the Inner Temple. [Sidenote: 12 & 13 WILL. III, c. 7.] It was provided that on the decease of any one of the four family trustees the heir male, for the time being, of Sir Robert COTTON, the founder, should appoint a successor.

The furious party-spirit which at this time divided the country into hostile camps, the leaders of which were at any moment ready to fly at each other’s throats, was eminently unfavourable both to the guardianship and to the growth of the new institution; as it was, indeed, to all matters of learning or of mental culture. Hardly seven years had passed before it was found necessary to pass ‘_An Act for the better securing of Her Majesty’s purchase of Cotton House in Westminster_.’

This Act recites that since the preceding enactment of 1700 ‘very little had been done in pursuance thereof to make the said Library useful to the Public, except what had been lately done at Her Majesty’s charge;’ and that the place wherein the Library then was, being ‘a narrow little damp room, was improper for preserving the books and papers.’ The Act then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, ‘to the intent that it might be in Her Majesty’s power to make this most valuable collection useful to her own subjects, and to all learned strangers.’

Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the fire occurred by which it was so seriously injured. [Sidenote: THE FIRE AT ASHBURNHAM HOUSE.] The account which the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this calamity, runs thus:

‘On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by Dr. BENTLEY, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that stood perpendicularly upon each end of the mantel-tree.’

‘They were in hope, at first,’ continues the Committee, ‘to put a stop to the fire by throwing water upon the pieces of timber and wainscoat, ... and therefore did not begin to remove the books so soon as they otherwise would have done. But, the fire prevailing, Mr. CASLEY, the Deputy Librarian, took care in the first place to remove the famous Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of Augustus’ [twelve of the Cottonian presses, it will be remembered, were adorned by the heads of the twelve Cæsars, whence the still existing designations or press-marks, as for instance, that of the famous _Evangeliary of King Ethelstan_, NERO D. vi, mentioned on page 132] ‘in the Cottonian Library, as being esteemed the most valuable amongst the collection. Several entire presses, with the books in them, were also removed; but ... several of the backs of the presses being already on fire, they were obliged to be broke open, and the books, as many as could be, thrown out of the windows.’ All the MSS. that were saved, and the remains of what been burnt, were removed to the Dormitory of Westminster School.

[Sidenote: 1731 October.]

At the time of this disastrous fire, the number of MS. volumes was 958. Of this number 114 were reported to be ‘lost, burnt, or entirely spoiled; and 98 damaged so as to be defective.’ Mr. Speaker ONSLOW took immediate measures, in conjunction with Dr. BENTLEY and Mr. CASLEY, for the examination of the burnt MSS., and for the repair of such as were then deemed alone reparable. Three months afterwards the Record Clerk to whom the task was more particularly committed, thus reports his progress: ‘One hundred and upwards,’ he says, ‘being volumes of Letters and State Papers, have been quite taken to pieces, marked, and bound again.’ [Sidenote: _Report of the Committee appointed to view the Cottonian Library_ (1732), pp. 11–15; and Casley’s Appendix thereto.] But he laments that ‘there having no way hitherto been found out to extend vellum and parchment that has been shrivelled up and contracted by fire to its former dimensions, part of several of the vellum MSS. must remain not legible, unless the desideratum can be supplied.’

For nearly a century some of the most precious of the injured MSS. remained as the fire had left them. But in 1824, by the care of Mr. FORSHALL, the then Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, a commencement was made towards their restoration, which his successor, Sir F. MADDEN, zealously and successfully continued. Nearly three hundred volumes have been repaired, and more or less completely restored, (a considerable number of which were previously regarded as beyond all hope of recovery) to a state of legibility.[23]

The calamity of 1731 brought about what may, in a sense, be termed a partial compensation, by inducing Major Arthur EDWARDS to make an important bequest, with the view of precluding its recurrence. [Sidenote: THE BEQUEST OF ARTHUR EDWARDS.] Owing to the protraction of a life interest in the legacy—the terms of which will be cited in describing that eventual Act of Incorporation which created the British Museum—it did not become available until other arrangements had made its application to building purposes needless. It was, consequently, and in pursuance of the Testator’s contingent instructions, appropriated to the purchase of books in the manner, and with results, which will be spoken of in a subsequent chapter. Major EDWARDS also bequeathed his own collection of about 2,000 volumes of printed books, by way of addition to the Cottonian Library of MSS. These, however, were not actually incorporated with the Museum collections until the year 1769.

For several years, BENTLEY conjoined the Keepership of the Cottonian with that of the Royal Library. His predecessors in the office were Dr. Thomas SMITH (hitherto the only biographer of the Founder,) and William HANBURY, who had married a descendant of the Founder. [Sidenote: THE KEEPERS OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY.] Dr. SMITH was less eminent as a scholar—though his learning was great—but far more estimable as a man, than was his successor in the Keepership, the imperious and covetous Master of Trinity. For conscience sake, SMITH had given up both a good fellowship and a good living, at the Revolution. Literature profited by the loss of Divinity. He died in May, 1710. HANBURY—by a very undesirable plurality—was a Trustee as well as Keeper. That he was not, in either capacity, strictly faithful to the spirit of the Trust confided to him seems to be established by incidents which I find recorded in the MS. Diary of Humphrey WANLEY. The reader will observe that it is possible to reconcile WANLEY’S statement with the supposition that the MSS. alienated had never actually been made part of the Cottonian Library, though it is as plain as sunlight that a really faithful trustee would have made them part of it. As it turned out, the sale of them did no actual and eventual mischief. On December 2nd, 1724, says WANLEY, ‘I had a conversation with Mr. HANBURY, who owned that he hath still in his possession many original and valuable papers given him by his wife’s brother, Sir John COTTON, which now lie in different places. These papers and whatever else happens to be among them—as books, rolls, &c.—he hath agreed to put into my hands for my Lord’s [OXFORD’S] use. [Sidenote: _Wanley’s Diary_, MS., ii, 40 (B.M.).] I have promised that he shall be very well paid and considered for the same.’

WANLEY had already recorded a previous visit in which HANBURY had delivered ‘for my Lord OXFORD’S use, a small but curious parcel of old letters,’ adding: ‘I believe he expects a gratuity for them.’ On the last day of December he received another parcel; and on the 4th January, 1725, he again writes: ‘Mr. HANBURY gave me another parcel of letters written to Sir Robert COTTON.’

Without endorsing the violent diatribe of Lord OXFORD (the second of the Harleian Earls) against HANBURY’S successor—as the almost wilful destroyer of part of the Cotton MSS.—it must be admitted that there is conclusive evidence that neglect of duty on Dr. BENTLEY’S part was a moving agent in the disaster. Under his nominal keepership the practical duties of Cottonian Librarian were discharged by an industrious and otherwise meritorious deputy, David CASLEY.

[Sidenote: THE PROJECT OF 1707 FOR UNITING THE COTTONIAN, ROYAL, AND
ARUNDEL, LIBRARIES.]

There were many projects for making Sir Robert COTTON’S noble collections, both in literature and antiquities, the foundation of a ‘British Museum,’ before a feasible and successful project was hit upon. [Sidenote: Sloane to Charlett, 7 April, 1707. (Bodleian Library, Oxford).] It is curious to note that one of these schemes embraced, as the groundwork of the projected national Museum, the collections of Sir Robert COTTON, of Prince HENRY, and of Lord ARUNDEL; and that some particulars of the plan were narrated—to a country correspondent—by Sir Hans SLOANE, almost fifty years before his own conditional bequest gave occasion and means for the eventual union of the collections so spoken of with the vast gatherings of all kinds, in literature and in science, to the procuring of which so large a portion of his own useful and laborious life was to be devoted.

When that occasion came, two of the then Cottonian Trustees framed a Petition to Parliament in which they expressed their acknowledgments for ‘seasonable and necessary care’ of the Cotton Library. They alleged that it had remained ‘almost useless’ to the Public, during many years, for want of a fixed and convenient building to receive it; that it had been exposed to many dangers by frequent removals, and had once run the hazard of ‘a total destruction by fire.’ If, said they, the loss which the Public then sustained proved to be less than had been feared, the Public owed the obligation ‘to a great member of this House’ [of Commons] ‘who powerfully interposed and assisted in its preservation.’ The allusion is to the Right Hon. Arthur ONSLOW, the then Speaker, who afterwards became one of the first Trustees of the Museum established by the Act of 1753.

[Sidenote: Petition of Samuel Burroughs and Thos. Hart; MS. in Cottonian
‘Appendix’ (B. M.).]

The Petitioners proceed to state that their most earnest wishes are accomplished by seeing a Library, famed throughout Europe, with the generous gifts of Major EDWARDS annexed thereto, placed out of all further dangers from neglect, and that they rejoice to perceive that the Museum of their own Founder is about to be enlarged by other rare and valuable collections. ‘We are,’ say they, ‘fully persuaded that an edifice raised upon such a stately plan will, by degrees, be stored with benefactions and become a common Cabinet for preserving with safety all curiosities and whatsoever is choice or excellent in its kind. Moreover, being a new institution for the service of the learned world it will be an honour to the Nation, an ornament long wanted in this great city, and a distinguished event in the history of our times.’ [Sidenote: Heretofore, p. 3.] Then follows the passage which I have prefixed, by way of motto, to this first division of the volume now in the reader’s hands.

When these Petitioners went on to state to Parliament that ‘no expression of gratitude can be too great ... for doing honour to the memory of Sir Robert COTTON,’ their assertion gave rise to no utterance of hostile feeling. [Sidenote: RECENT CHARGES AGAINST THE CHARACTER AND FAME OF SIR R. COTTON.] They were not even charged with undue laudation of their ancestor. People who at that time troubled themselves to think of such matters at all, were agreed in regarding Sir Robert COTTON as unquestionably one of the worthies of England. Nowadays—as I have had occasion to show already—there are many gainsayers. A distinguished historian (Mr. GARDINER) asperses COTTON’S character both for statesmanship and for truthfulness; whilst a distinguished archæologist (Mr. BREWER) charges him with embezzling records.

The first charge has been partly met, in these pages, by the simple apposition and collation of contemporary evidence. The reader has his choice between the cumulative testimony of several English peers and statesmen; and the unsupported testimony of one foreign diplomatist, who made it his boast to be the enemy of Englishmen, and whose hostility was graduated in tolerably exact accordance with the qualities and the deeds which have made England proud of them. The home witnesses gave their testimony whilst the events were still fresh in men’s minds. They gave it in broad daylight, and with open doors. The foreign witness put his evidence into a secret dispatch, to be seen by no human eye, out of the Spanish Cabinet, until our own historian disinterred it, at Simancas, two centuries and a half after date. Nor is this quite all.

If GONDOMAR’S account be true, not only was Sir Robert COTTON’S life as a statesman a protracted lie, but his duplicity was so superbly cloaked as to deceive the most keen-sighted of his contemporaries. The men who sat habitually at his board in his days of health, and who ministered at his bedside in all the offices of tender friendship in his days of sickness and of death, were all wrong about his character. [Sidenote: _A Discours wether yt be fitt for Inglande to make peace with Spaine._ MS. Cott. Vespas. C. xiii, ff. 160, seqq. (B. M.).] And there is this other little fact to boot: Sir Robert COTTON began his public life by as open a declaration of anti-Spanish policy in relation to the great question of the Netherlands as ever came from the lips of our RALEGH. He ended his public life with as staunch an adherence to the principles, both in Church and State, which the rulers of Spain abhorred as that which had been shown by RALEGH on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, or by ELIOT in the dungeon of the Tower of London. Meanwhile, just in the mid-channel of his career, and in the prime of his faculties, Sir Robert COTTON threw himself, gratuitously, at the feet of GONDOMAR. He humbly asked leave to take Spanish service in the guise of a political slave. The historian’s proposition is a bold one. And its evidence needs to be cogent. English readers now know quite enough about GONDOMAR to judge whether or not his sole testimony is sufficient to damn the fame of such a man as COTTON;—to degrade him from the rank of an English worthy;—to brand him as a criminal virtually convicted of apostacy in religion, and of treason to his avowed convictions in politics?[24]

From the nature of things the second charge cannot be so directly, so compactly, or so effectively met. Almost a third of the manuscripts which form the most important section of the Cotton Library consist of, or contain, Papers of State. Of these a very considerable proportion once belonged to the State. How came they to pass into the hands of Sir Robert COTTON?

[Sidenote: MR. BREWER’S ACCOUNT OF SIR R. COTTON’S ACQUISITION OF STATE
PAPERS.]

By Mr. BREWER the question has been answered, unhesitatingly and exhaustively. Large portions of the Diplomatic Correspondence of HENRY THE EIGHTH were, he says, ‘carried off in 1614, if not before, by Sir Robert COTTON.... The original bundles appear to have been broken up under the keepership of AGARDE, when the Treasury of the Exchequer was rifled of its most precious contents to augment the collections of Sir R. COTTON.... [Sidenote: _Calendar of the State Papers_; Reign of Henry VIII, Pref., pp. viii, ix.] For the early years of HENRY, his [Sir Robert’s] collections are more numerous, and even more interesting, than the documents in the English, the French, or the Spanish Archives. They are equally authentic.... By what fraud or negligence they found their way into the possession of Sir Robert COTTON it is not for me to inquire.’

No writer can be better qualified to speak with authority on such a topic as this than is Mr. BREWER. Familiar with State Papers and with records of all kinds for a very long period, he has won the deep respect of all students of our history by the uses to which his knowledge has been applied. But the ablest writer will sometimes write hastily. The most impartial inquirer will now and then reach a conclusion by overleaping part of the evidence.

The sweeping passage which I have quoted, like other passages in Mr. RILEY’S preface to _Liber Custumarum_, previously noticed, leaves altogether out of view three or four whole classes of testimony—chains not links—having a vital bearing on the issue. For example—

[Sidenote: Sir T. Wilson to King James I, _Domestic Corresp._, vol.
xcvi, § 41*, seqq. (R. H.)]

I. It disregards the fact that certain bundles of State letters and papers were given by the King’s order to Sir Robert COTTON, during the reign of JAMES THE FIRST. These, indeed, were commanded to be ‘subscriptions and signatures of Princes and great men, attached to letters _otherwise unimportant_.’ But who is to tell us what was the estimate of ‘importance’ in papers of State formed, two centuries and a half ago, by JAMES, who gave the order, or by Sir Thomas WILSON, who received it?

II. It disregards the fact that long before, as well as long after, that known order of 1618, Sir Robert’s possession of papers once the property of the Government was so published and so recognized as to imply, by fair induction, that the possession must have been—as far as he was concerned—a lawful one. In his own writings, he iterates and reiterates reference to national documents then in his own collection. His references are specific and minute. Secretaries of State write to him, asking leave to inspect original Treaties (sometimes in order to lay them before the King in person) and promising to return them promptly. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, as above, 1621, March; and _passim_; also _Council Books_ (C. O.).] Law Officers of the Crown desire him kindly to afford them opportunities for collating public instruments, preserved at Cotton House, with public instruments still in the repositories of the Crown.

III. It leaves out of sight the fact that in the correspondence of Sir Edward COKE with Sir Robert COTTON there is a passage which also _implies_—though it does not expressly assert—that Sir Robert had received from King JAMES a permission to select records, of some kind or other, from the Tower of London, anterior to the qualified permission, [Sidenote: Sir E. Coke to Sir R. Cotton; MS. Cott. Julius, ciii (Undated; probably 1612). (B. M.)] above mentioned, given in 1618, to select ‘autographs’ from the Paper Office;

IV. It disregards that strong implication of a lawful possession—so far as Sir Robert COTTON, individually, is concerned—which necessarily arises out of the fact that at two several periods the Cottonian Library was under the sole control and custody of Crown officials; [Sidenote: _Registers of Privy Council_, 1616; 1629; 1630; _passim_ (C. O.)] that it remained under such control for an aggregate period of more than two years; that COTTON’S bitter enemies were then at the head of affairs; that in 1630 a Royal Commission was actually issued [Sidenote: _Signs Manual_, Charles I, vol. xii, § 15 (R. H.).] ‘to search what Records or other Papers of State in the custody of Sir Robert COTTON properly belong to His Majesty, and thereof to certify;’ and that the existing Cottonian MSS., together with those burned in 1732, were, one year after the issue of that Commission, restored by the Crown to Sir Robert COTTON’S heirs;

[Sidenote: _e. g._ MS. Harl., 7002, ff. 120, 122, &c., MS. Cott. Julius
ciii, _passim_ (B. M.).]

V. It overlooks the circumstance, vital to the issue now raised, that amongst the MSS. which most indubitably were once Crown property many can still be minutely traced from possessor to possessor, prior to their reception into the Cottonian Library;

And VI. It disregards the fact, hardly less important, that a patriotic statesman conversant both with the arcana of government at large, and with the special arcana of the State Paper Office and Secretary’s offices, under King JAMES THE FIRST and King CHARLES THE FIRST, might have cogent reasons for believing that some important classes of State Papers would be likely to remain much more truly and enduringly the property of the English nation if stored up at Cotton House—even had no ‘British Museum’ ever been created—than if stored up at Whitehall.

Inferences and implications such as these are far from amounting to conclusive proof. But most readers, I think, will assent to the assertion that, cumulatively, they amount to a very strong presumption indeed that the stigma which has been impressed on Sir Robert COTTON’S memory is both precipitate and unjust. Precipitate it plainly is, for a confident verdict has virtually been pronounced—upon a grave issue,—before hearing any evidence for the accused. Unjust I, for one, cannot but think it, inasmuch as circumstances which at most are but grounds of mere suspicion of the greater offence charged, have been so huddled up with proofs of a minor and (comparatively) venial offence, that readers giving but ordinary attention to the allegations and their respective evidence are almost certain to be misled.

For, undoubtedly, Sir Robert COTTON stands convicted of dealing, more than once, with manuscripts which he had borrowed very much as though they had been manuscripts which he possessed. Mr. RILEY’S testimony is, on this point, conclusive. An independent witness, Dr. Sedgwick SAUNDERS, the able Chairman of the Library Committee of the Corporation of London, tells me that both the _returned_ MS. of _Liber Custumarum_, and also that of _Liber Legum Antiquorum_, bear as unmistakable marks of a claim to ownership on Sir Robert’s part, as those of which the return was refused.

To such proofs as these I can myself add a new instance. Archbishop LAUD had procured, from the Principal and Fellows of St. John’s, the loan to Sir Robert COTTON of a certain ancient Beda MS. of great value. Many years passed, and the MS. had not returned to St. John’s. The Fellows cast severe blame on their eminent benefactor. [Sidenote: Archbp. Laud to Sir R. Cotton, MS. Cott. Julius C., iii, f. 232.] LAUD had to petition his friend COTTON for the return of Beda, in terms almost pathetic; and he was so doubtful whether pathos would suffice that he added bribe to entreaty. If, he said, ‘anything of worth in like kind come to my hands, I will freely give it you in recompense.’

The reader has seen the abounding proofs of that generous furtherance of every kind of literary effort which COTTON gave, throughout life, with an ungrudging heart and an open hand. [Sidenote: Bolton to Camden; MS. Harl., 7002, f. 396.] Sir ROBERT’S openness made his library—to use the words of an eminent contemporary—the ‘Common treasury’ of English antiquities. The reader now sees also the drawback. It remains for him to strike a true balance; and to strike it with justice, but also with charity.